


Of Crossroads and Doubt

by Tassos



Series: A City Elf Walks Into a Blight - Ian Tabris Stories [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gen, On the road to Lothering, post-ostagar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 16:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5792026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tassos/pseuds/Tassos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stopping a Blight is a big ask, and Ian has some deep reservations about three people being able to raise an army. Still getting to know his new traveling companions, Morrigan is surprisingly inspiring. In her own way. A conversation on the road to Lothering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Crossroads and Doubt

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure this is saying what I want it to say, and I'm definitely not feeling Morrigan's voice yet, so bear with me.

"You shouldn't trust him."

Ian glanced to his side where Morrigan had slipped up beside him. "Who?" He asked. "Alistair?" 

Up ahead his fellow warden was leading the way along the trail through the Korcari Wilds. Well out of ear shot.

"He's a templar."

"I'm not a mage," Ian scoffed. "And he's not a templar anymore."

Morrigan gave him a sideways look. "Being a warden doesn't mean he isn't still a templar underneath," she said. "And he's not very bright. He's as likely to lead us into an ambush as do half the 'noble' things he says we must to stop the Blight." Her voice turned mocking, and Ian glanced ahead at Alistair again, who was slapping a sapling branch out of his face. 

Fighting with a tree, he did look a bit like the idiot Morrigan claimed for a moment, but then he was past the branch and straightening up again, with his armor creaking and his shield clanking against his scabbard, and the moment passed.

"Your mother was the one who was so insistent we stop this Blight," Ian reminded Morrigan. Alistair had been all for it, too, of course, but Flemeth was the one who had given them the bones of a plan.

"'Tis a strange way to put it." Morrigan slowed, turning slightly to fully look at him. Her eyes narrowed. "And you don't sound like you think it's a good idea."

Ian felt caught in her sharp, tawny eyes, like he'd been caught in a lie or something. "It is a good idea," he said, but even in his own ears it sounded too much like protesting his good intentions. He was usually better at convincing people of what they wanted to hear, but there was something about Morrigan that tripped him up. He was used to most people overlooking him -- just another elf, him -- but Morrigan's gaze didn't slide past him. Instead it went right through him.

He pushed on past her, not wanting to lose sight of Alistair. "The darkspawn are nasty pieces of work," he said. "They wiped out the army. Of course they need to be stopped."

"But . . ." Morrigan was right on his heels.

The familiar burn of anger in his veins made Ian want to spin on her and shout, but learning when to fight and when to take a breath was a survival skill that told him to hold his tongue with her. After all, Morrigan wanted to be on the road to Lothering about as much as he did. As they hiked onward, the roil of emotion in his gut took him a while to settle into words. Morrigan was patient, sticking with him, her dangling question heavy between them.

"I didn't expect any of this," Ian finally said. "When Duncan conscripted me, it was join the wardens or rot in a dungeon, so of course I said yes. The only thing I've ever fought for before has been my family, to keep them safe from human soldiers, and now the three of us are supposed to fight an army of darkspawn and protect all the humans in Ferelden? It's too big."

"What did you think joining the wardens meant?" Morrigan asked, exasperation in her voice. "That's all wardens do is stand like idiots between the darkspawn and common folk."

"I didn't think there'd be just two of us left!" Ian did stop walking this time as a wave of fear seemed to rise up inside of him. Duncan's offer had been a lifeline -- and he was grateful for it. 

He'd even been grateful when he drank from the chalice at the Joining. The words, the deaths, the promise of something bigger than himself, and the memory of his mother always fighting a hopeless battle, and then the new hope that Ian in a small way could fight something real and make a difference with the wardens. When he'd encountered the darkspawn in that first trip into the Wilds, he'd thought he could do this, be part of the army.

Now . . . He put his hands on his hips and swallowed down the fear so it wouldn't be in his voice when he spoke. Morrigan's eyes were heavy on him and he couldn't look her in the eye. 

"Alistair's been a warden for less than six months. I've been one for less than a week. Even if all these important people with these treaties and everything works out, Alistair is a common soldier who speaks before thinking, and I'm an elf. Who's going to listen to us? We're nobodies."

When he risked a glance at her, Morrigan was still watching him and seeing too much, but her expression was unreadable. He was still figuring her out and finding that, other than her dislike for Alistair, she was as cagey as Ian was, in her own way. 

"Do you want to stop the Blight?" she finally asked, which was a dumb question.

"Of course, I want the Blight stopped," Ian replied. "It's not fair that your mother thinks we're the only ones who can do that."

"She would tell you without sympathy that life is seldom fair."

"I _know_ that," Ian rolled his eyes, annoyed and offended, because he did not need her to explain that to _him_ like he was some idiot child. "I grew up with the humans stomping all over us just because they could."

"T'would seem like you wouldn't mind seeing them fall to the Blight." Morrigan smiled slightly, but Ian wasn't sure if they were sharing a jest of some sort.

"Some," Ian couldn't deny. But he frowned because among the humans he'd known had been Acorra and Soshia, the thieves he'd sometimes done scouting for in the city before his father forbade it. They weren't bad sorts. A handful of the city guard who put a stop to harassment they saw in the Alienage. Duncan who'd given him a sword to save Shianni and then saved his skin. Alistair who was teaching him to use it.

The other warden was far ahead of them now, more a shiny reflection through the swamp's underbrush than a figure leading them on. Ian wondered if he'd notice that they'd fallen behind.

"But . . . " This time Morrigan seemed curious rather than ready to catch him out.

"But then I fought at Ostagar." His eyes drifted over Morrigan's shoulder, looking for the ruin that was already lost to sight. "The darkspawn -- have you fought them?" Morrigan shook her head. Ian tried to find the words. "They're not what I was expecting. They're just monsters to scare kids where I'm from, something the humans tell stories about. But facing them in battle: they smell like death and growl, and they don't feel pain the way we do. We saw the horde from the bridge and it was . . . " Ian shook his head, uncertain he could describe it. "Big. Enormous. Like a pile of maggots across the whole countryside. And then we were in the thick of it. I wasn't ready. I should have died before we reached the tower. I probably would have if not for Alistair."

As he spoke, Morrigan's face had softened. "Must have been an accident," she said, which made Ian huff a laugh. 

"After seeing the darkspawn up close -- they need to be stopped. Even to save humans I'd rather see dead," he continued. His own feelings about justice, who deserved saving and who didn't, seemed petty in comparison to the massive, uncaring horde. "I just don't know that we can do it. There has to be someone else who can do a better job of it. Why does it have to be us?"

"Hmm." Morrigan resumed walking, and Ian fell into step beside her. The rush of words hadn't made him feel better, only left him with the ringing thought in his head, _why me?_ Ian wasn't prepared for any of this. It didn't even feel like his fight.

After a few hundred paces, Morrigan spoke. "My mother, as you might have noticed, isn't afraid of anything. She doesn't concern herself with the affairs of civilization, or the movements of kings and nobles. So that she feels that worse is to come with the darkspawn -- that she sent me with you -- means that this task should not be taken lightly."

"Trust me, it's anything but weighing lightly on me," Ian said, earning himself a quelling glance.

"That she sent me _with you_ ," Morrigan repeated like he wasn't getting it. And Ian realized he wasn't. He didn't know what she was saying. "She means for you to succeed -"

"You're going to make us succeed just by your presence?" He turned a skeptical eye toward her.

"-by any means necessary," Morrigan finished overtop his words. "Because the only alternative is the very land dying."

Ian frowned.

"Hadn't heard that part of the tale? 'Tis the very reason Blights are so desperate," she said. 

"Then why did Loghain leave the field?" Ian asked, but it was a half-hearted question. 

"Does it matter? It's done. And he isn't a Grey Warden who took an oath to kill darkspawn -- whether ready for it or not."

Ian supposed that was true enough. He felt a sigh building in his chest and let it out with a long controlled breath. And the meat of it was, Ian had sworn the words, he wanted to live up to Duncan's faith in him that he'd make a good warden. He'd never been much to look at in the Alienage other than a half-controlled temper. His father had blocked him from the one thing he was good at, which was breaking into other people's houses. It was good money, and choices what they were, Ian wasn't ashamed exactly. 

More, he felt his father's shame. He was a disappointment in so many ways that it hurt each time his father found another part of his soul lacking. His wedding was supposed to balance it out somehow -- his father had made all the arrangements so carefully, and Ian hated to think what it had cost him for his set of wedding clothes. He didn't want marriage -- another disappointment -- but he'd wanted to make his father happy and proud of him, just once. And here he was, a killer and an exile both.

He and Morrigan walked in silence for a while. Up ahead, Alistair had finally noticed their lagging and was waiting for them to catch up.

"What about you? Do you think we can stop it?" Ian asked while they still had the privacy of distance. Morrigan was here because her mother wished it. He'd only known her two days, but from her manner so far he doubted she held any illusions about what they were capable of.

Yet, she surprised him. "I think that it doesn't matter what I or you or even Alistair's infernal optimism has us believe. We must press on as if we can, for to do otherwise is surely to lead to failure."

Ian turned that over in his head as they finally rejoined Alistair. He'd stopped a crossroad, where another path overlapped the one they were on.

"So, oh wise guide," he said with cheer and a big sarcastic smile for Morrigan, "which way from here?"

Morrigan rolled her eyes and pushed past Alistair even though there was plenty of room to walk around him. 

"Hey! Manners!" Alistair snapped at her.

"Keep up, soldier," she returned over her shoulder. She took the new path that canted to the right from their present track, forging ahead without looking back at either of them. Forging ahead on the path her mother had set them, with none of the doubt Ian felt churning in his belly. Perhaps she had the right of it, he thought. There was only a battlefield of dead behind them, after all. Ian exchanged a look with Alistair, who was indignant and grumbling, and forged on after her.

~*~


End file.
